


She'll Be Right

by KyberHearts



Category: Overwatch (Video Game)
Genre: F/M, First Meeting, Slow Burn, Strong Language
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2017-04-30
Updated: 2017-06-03
Packaged: 2018-10-25 07:07:18
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 3
Words: 3,128
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10759248
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/KyberHearts/pseuds/KyberHearts
Summary: Not sure how I'm going to invest my time in this fic, but thought I'd at least try.Tags/Summary will be updated as I go along





	1. 2075

She's tired of the ice.  
  
And yet, it draws her attention in ways nothing else or no one else could. The color, the formation. How do you define ice? As a scientist, she could simply call it the result of a completed phase change from liquid water or gaseous vapour. But where was the emotion behind that statement?

Ice was the sensation against your parched lips during a steaming summer barbeque. Ice was the stinging kiss against your ruddy cheeks. Ice was the blanket between yourself and the outside world. An excuse, an alibi, a reason to skip today's lecture. But sometimes it was overwhelming, and the cold was like an unwanted guest in your bones.

Mei-Ling's tired of the ice, and so she dreams.

She dreams of visiting the ecopoint in Lausanne, Switzerland, as spring peaks and thaws into something milder, something more welcoming than brash winter. Mei’s secretly glad that Overwatch approved of the Swiss ecopoint; climate in Lausanne was stable and predictable, especially in comparison to places south of the equator.  She's on a balcony overlooking Lake Geneva. It’s beautiful today.

Someone’s whispering. _Mei-Ling, guess what today is?_ No, several voices. They are all so achingly familiar. Part of Mei realizes that she’s dreaming. _Mei-Ling, guess what today is?_

She doesn't answer, reluctant to tear her eyes away from the lake's reflective surface and guardian purplish mountains. But then there are hands gently pulling and tugging her inside. There's a gigantic vanilla frosted cake in the center of the room. _Happy birthday, Mei!_ say the people around he. She smiles. She should be happy.

So what’s with this pounding feeling in her chest, the one that hums wistfully?

The faceless characters gather round to hug her. _Something’s wrong,_ Mei thinks, because their skin and clothes are suddenly scorching hot. That shouldn’t be possible. Well of course, it’s just a dream. But the heat sears through her rationale and edges her into a panic. _Let go,_ she tries to say. _You're burning me._

The dream melts into a nightmare. They seize her hands and shoulders with fire for hands, with holes for mouths, crushing her, making it difficult to breathe. Someone knocks away her glasses and her chin hits the ground. When did she fall down? Why does every part of her feel feverish?

Mei-Ling weakly opens her eyes and stares at the environment-friendly, fluorescent light bulbs shining above. She’s on her side, vision blurry without her glasses. She _knows_ that the ground caked with snow beneath her is cold, but she doesn’t feel it. She still feels too warm, despite having bare skin exposed to the arctic winds.

Mei knows this place. _Antarctica._ The name is heavy on her tongue. Why is she here? And she remembers an unprecedented polar storm, a forsaken ecopoint, a last-resort solution for herself and her fellow scientists. She finds her glasses and jams them on her face. Even so, it takes a moment to focus on the dark blue pod less than a meter away, flashing a red flag and her last name.  
  
"Check the other pods!"  
  
Here’s a voice she's never heard before. She wonders if the human brain can conjure original voices. She's read somewhere that every face in a dream belongs to a real person you've glimpsed, even if just for a moment.  
  
"This is her?" A murmur of answers. She’s Mei-Ling Zhou, climatologist, adventurer, employed by Overwatch. All of her thoughts are rushing back. Antarctica. Crew. Torres. Adams. Opara. Arrhenius. MacReady. Cryostasis.

She shifts her eyes, albeit painfully, to the other scientists who froze themselves in pods. She can’t see their faces; the glass is foggy and opaque. But she can see their EKGs, the heart rate monitors. Stark yellow. Flat lines. Flat lines. Flat lines all around. Mei whispers, “No…” This is a dream. This has to be a dream. She can’t see their faces, so this must be a dream. “No, please-”

“She’s awake,” someone grumbles.

"All right, take her to the hovercraft. Handle her carefully." And then the flames are back, the fire in the shape of hands. Scalding her skin, and she's fighting, she's shouting, she's wishing that the ice would come back and sing her to sleep.


	2. The Junker

The ground feels abnormally warm, as if the level is insulated with underfloor heating. Somewhere in the back of Mei’s head, she calculates that it would take an immense amount of energy to power a whole building with this kind of electrical heating. Unless there were advances in technology during her absence.

No one will tell her what year it is, or how long it’s been since she was released from cryostasis. She receives two meals per day, a handful of gruel and half a bread slice. At first, her stomach couldn’t handle the food. A few nights were spent curled in a corner. But as the shadows in her cell passed east to west, and her hair began to grow past her shoulders, she had learned how to eat again and how to think again.

She claims one hundred square feet of this jail, ten feet either way. A window stretches along one wall, and streams light through thick, layered glass with fingernail scratches. Most do not belong to her. Mei remembers the guards’ shifts. She remembers their mannerisms, whether they double check the lock twice after leaving, or if they throw the meal plate carelessly.

It is a prison. Her every move outside of the cell is monitored, and her moments inside the cell are torturous. She’s alone with her thoughts, her grief for her crew.

But Mei-Ling knows, she knows that she’s getting out. Somehow.

 

There’s commotion below, Mei can hear. She had been lying down, ear to the ground, and heard shouting and growling and stomping that nears her floor. And then the noise draws closer to her cell. Mei sits up quickly, hair falling over her glasses. Is this her rescue? Is this her ticket home?

The cell door shudders, then bursts open.

“ーand YOU BETCHA that I ain’t gonna be locked up for long, AND THATー”

Mei flattens herself to the side as her captors throw a tall, gangly man into the opposite corner. He shrieks as he hits the ground, then immediately rolls over and launches himself at the door. It’s closed before he even stands, but it doesn’t stop him from smashing his hands and shoulders into the steel. Red-faced, shouting almost gleefully, he says, “And just you WAIT AND SEE! I’ve got my BEST pal on his way.” A pause for breath.

Then a really loud “FUCK OFF.”

Mei keeps seated. He puffs himself up to his unseen jailors and towers, his spiked blonde hair brushing against the cell ceiling. With a thin frame and long face, he seems even taller. Mei keeps looking. He’s shackled wrist to wrist, ankle toー peg leg? She squints, and sees a mechanical right hand and a makeshift spring contraption replacing his right leg. A glorified peg leg.

The new prisoner, an Aussie and looking at least a decade younger than her, suddenly slouches, huffs, and paces the cell in large, easy strides. He mutters under his breath, a crazy light in his dark eyes. He doesn’t seem to notice Mei for a long time. When he finally slides down against a wall, he stares across the room and right at Mei-Ling.

“How long ‘ave you been there?”

“I was here first,” says Mei, voice cracking. Not from emotion, just lack of use. “What floor are we on?”

“What?”

“You weren’t blindfolded or unconscious,” she says, waving a hand at the door. “Were you awake the whole time you were captured?”

“Yeah. Fourth floor, I reckon.” He scratches his nose with his mechanical hand. “How come you don’t have handcuffs?” She wants to answer, but he cuts her off. “Who’re you, anyways? What’re doing here?”

“Mei-Ling. Or just Mei.” She pushes her glasses up her nose. “And they’ll take off your cuffs as long as you don’t fight back.”

He bristles in response. “I’m just supposed to not ‘fight back’?”

“Unless you want to be in shackles for the rest ofー” Mei hesitates. “What year is it?”

“Fuck, lady, you’re really been here a while?” He sounds, for a moment, sympathetic. “It’s ‘75.”

Mei had been on ice for almost ten years. She closes her eyes. Years lost. A whole new, unfamiliar world.

“I’m Junkrat.”

“You’re _what_?”

“Junkrat!” He grins. “I’m a Junker. Down under and all that shiz.”

Mei strains to remember the history, but it comes quicker than expected. In 2052, an omnium factory in Australia was handed over to omnics in attempts of a peace treaty. The dramatic increase in the robot population displaced many Australian residents who decided to form a rebellion. Two years later, the conflict destroyed the factory core and drenched the Outback with radiation.

This Junkrat, lounging across from Mei, is one of those who survived. She heard stories about the scavengers, the Junkers, and that they were lawless and ruthless. She feels the hairs on her arm stand up. Mei has to be careful. She was locked in with a Junker for who knew how long.

Junkrat stretches his legs out and winces as the shackles chafe his skin. “They caught me lurking on some private property. Didn’t see no sign. Next thing I know, I’m being dragged up stairs and dumped here.”

“What country? What city?” Mei asks carefully.

“Erm,” he thinks. “Some suburb in Brazil. Probably near Rio. Me and my mate were looking for work, heard that there was some good money against omnics.” Junkrat clucks his tongue. “Betcha Roadie’s on his way, though.”

“Is he a Junker, too?”

“Sorta. ALF. But yeah, I guess.”

She’s now concerned about potentially facing off _two_ violent scavengers if they felt like killing her. But Mei stares at Junkrat, who loses himself in some mindless thinking, and hesitatingly reckons that if he were really like the Junker stories, she would be fighting for her life already. Perhaps they had mellowed in the last few years.

She’s prepared to give him the benefit of the doubt but at the same time can’t help but feel apprehension towards him. “So. Mei.”

"Yeah?”

“C’mon. What’re you in for?” His tone is teasing, maybe to lighten the mood.

“IーI don’t know.” The stutter is what kills her faked ignorance. Junkrat merely leans forward, peg leg creaking, metal fingers scraping against the handcuffs absentmindedly. Mei looks at the door. “I thinkー they thinkーI’ve only heard the guards whispering to each other. They think I killed...”

“Who?”

“My friends.” She thinks about Antarctica and its nipping wind. She longs for a different kind of cold in this warm hell. “But I didn’t.”

Junkrat hacks a cough. “Well, shit.”


	3. The Scientist

Junkrat scratches a line in his prosthetic leg for each day that passes; he reckons that it’s been ten days since his arrival.

_Mako’s late._

The young man blows a bored raspberry, yawns, and looks once more at the scientist on her side of the room. There’s not a lot of other options to gaze at during his confinement. Mei-Ling’s got a sad, serious light in her large brown eyes, inquisitive whenever she glances in Junkrat’s direction. But besides that, she seems staleー no, blank. Difficult to read. Emotionless. Cold.

“How’s your wrist?” Mei asks.

Junkrat chuckles. “It aches.” Within the first few hours of imprisonment, he’d fought against the cuffs around his left wrist, cutting deep and bruising until the skin mottled. Until Mei dared to grab his wrist and hold him still as she screamed for a guard and a key. Her grip on his flesh was freezing, enough to make him shiver in the warm cell.

At least when that happened, Junkrat could look up into her eyes and see the concern and fear in her face. _Emotion, check._ This mental note is helping him maintain a kind of sanity while trapped here. Seems she favors anger and fear as her default emotions.

“Let me see,” she says, and holds out a hand. Junkrat scoots across the cell to her and flinches as her fingers run across the bruises and scabbing wounds. Not one of his finer moments. Mei doesn’t seem to know that she’s icy cold; she releases him after a minute and announces, “You’ll be fine.”

“Course.” He doesn’t move from the spot, either too lazy or too indifferent to return to his corner.

A sort of familiar quiet falls over the cell.

Mei’s shoulder brushes against his elbow and Junkrat can’t help the shiver. She sees this. “What’s the matter?”

“You’re cold as _fuck_ ,” Junkrat mutters. “Like I’m in June.”

The cell door swings open silently on its oiled hinges.

The two prisoners look up as three heavily armored guards enter. One of them barks at Mei in Spanish, who answers just as quickly, and is then hoisted to her feet. Junkrat struggles to his feet, but the others push him down. A metal bat aims at his noggin. “Stay down,” Mei says, slipping back into English.

“Where are they takin’ you?” he demands.

“I don’tー” Mei begins, but then she’s out of sight and the remaining two guards glare disdainfully at the Junker.

He’s not sure how long they remain in that positionー him sprawled on the ground, the sentires poised to counter any of his possible attacksー when a radio on one of their belts crackle. “Sol-9, Sol-8, check in.”

“Check.”

“Check.”

“Alpha here.” It is impossible to place the accent. Junkrat can barely make out the words, but if he strains, he can hear Mei’s vexed protests in the background. Emotion, check. “Zhou’s not complying. If you do not receive my affirmative within the next two minutes, you have orders to incapacitate the Junker to your heart’s content.” The message fizzles out.

The guard with the radio, Sol-9, smiles.

The other guard, Sol-8, hefts the metal bat in his hand.

Junkrat starts to count his minutes, but loses interest quickly.

Apparently, so do the guards.

Junkrat sees the look shared by 8 and 9, hears the whistling of the bat as it raises high, execution-like, hears the crunch of the bat as it dents the floor, narrowly missing him as he rolls out of the way. Junkrat springs up and clocks 9 across the jaw with his prosthetic hand.

He catches the second swing of the bat with the same hand, sensing how steel sheared against steel, and pushes Sol-8 back. Junkrat pants heavily, rubbing the skin above the prosthetic where it tingles painfully from the impact. He’s lost the element of surprise.

Sol-8 sees Junkrat’s hesitation in that moment, and steps forward with a mighty swing to his side. Sure to crack some ribs. Internal bleeding. Junkrat tries to grab the bat again, but this time the momentum nearly rips the metal forearm from his body and he’s forced to roll with the swing.

Can’t waste another second. The moment Junkrat finds his footing, he hurls himself at Sol-8 and wraps an arm around the batting arm. He smashes the side of his prosthetic arm in 8’s unprotected face. One, two, three. Blam, blam, blam, and he’s bloody. Wrestle the bat out of his loosening grip and slam it up his chin.

Both guards, down. Junkrat drops the bat. The pain in his right arm blossoms. His crafted metal arm wasn’t meant for this kind of trauma. He can feel the prosthetic slowly weakening and responding slower to his thoughts. He can’t flex as quickly, hold the baseball bat as tightly, and he hisses angrily. “Fuck! Fuck!”

He swipes the radio from 9’s belt. Shaking, he holds down the call button. “Mei, are you there?” Silence. “Mei, come on.” Nothing. “Fucking hell, Mei or whoever this fucker, fucker, Alpha, pick up the fucking radio or I fuckingー”

“I’m here.”

It’s soft, it’s timid, it’s breathless through the radio. It’s her.

“I’m here.”

He lets out a long sigh. “How’d you get the radio?”

“Same as you. Got rid of my guards.” There’s a grunt, then the sound of a door opening. “Something happened. They wanted me out of the cell for a reason. They were running out of time.”

“What? What for?”

“Start moving out of the cell. Downstairs. I’ll meet you in the lobby.” As Junkrat complies, weaving through empty, eerie hallways and finding the stairwell, he listens to Mei talking. “It’s not a prison like I thought. They were holding me for transport, and when that ran into trouble, they wanted information.”

“What am I doing here, then?” he asks.

“Leverage, I guess. Someone to use against me. But that doesn’t matter now. You see any guards around?”

“No.”

“Me neither.” A hitch in the breath. “Everyone else abandoned the site. Someone came for us.”

Junkrat flies down the stairs, almost tripping on every other step, his right arm now useless and held tight against his chest. He wrenches open the lobby door and sees Mei’s figure on the far side of the room. She has a fistful of papers in her hand, a radio in the other. Just as they step towards each other, brilliant lights flood the room from the outside.

He squints and sees people enter the building. Had to be enemies; what were allies?

But Mei runs towards one of the taller individuals and hugs her tightly, almost breaking down and crying. Emotion, check. It appears that the lady, blond and dressed in gleaming white armor, is sobbing, too. That's weird. Junkrat's never seen her happy before.

The sensations in his right arm become too much, and Junkrat slips to the ground for a breather. There’s a bottomless nothing beyond his elbow, but the upper arm is buzzing with pain. His ears have started ringing. Suddenly the bruises and cuts on his human hand are nothing in comparison. The Junker blinks, and then two figures stand before him.

“Can you stand?” the blond lady asks him, and with Mei’s hellp, lifts him to his feet. “It’s not far to the Orca. If you need additional help, I haveー”

“Mako,” Junkrat mumbles. “Iー I gotta wait, wait for Mako.”

“Do you mean Roadhog?” asks Mei. “Junkrat, we can’t wait for him. We have to get going.”

He resists a little, tries to take a step back. “I gotta wait for Roadie.”

And then Mei’s got him in that blazing, freezing hold, and her voice is alight with desperation. “Your friend, Mako, he’ll _find_ you. We have to go now.” she tells him. Maybe she’s just lying, saying what he wants to hear. She’s angry, she’s scared, she’s furious that he would try and stay. _Emotion, check,_ he thinks to himself again before fainting.

**Author's Note:**

> Not sure how I'm going to invest my time in this fic, but thought I'd at least try.
> 
> Tags/Summary will be updated as I go along


End file.
